The present invention is related to a locking apparatus meeting the regulation of U.S. customs, and more particularly to a locking apparatus with both numeral wheel locking unit and key-driven locking unit which are combined with a fastener to control locking/unlocking thereof.
The conventional locking apparatuses include numeral system and key-driven system. The numeral system includes numeral wheel type and press key type. These locking apparatuses are widely applied to various fields. For example, Taiwanese Patent Nos. 32470 and 46563 and Taiwanese Patent Publication No. 498918, entitled “hanging lock structure (5)” and Taiwanese Patent Publication No. 369068, entitled “hanging lock structure” respectively disclose locking apparatuses pertaining to numeral system and key-driven system applicable to baggage case or suitcase. Taiwanese Patent Publication No. 188528, entitled “belt numeral lock” and Taiwanese Patent Publication No. 457855, entitled “fastener structure of fastening strap of an appliance” disclose numeral locks combined with fastening straps of baggage case or suitcase.
Practically, it is known that when checked by U.S. customs workers, in case it is found the customs workers that the contents of the baggage case or suitcase are suspicious, the customs workers are authorized by U.S. government to forcedly break off the lock of the baggage case or suitcase and open the same for checking the contents. The damaged lock will be a loss of a user and will lead to trouble and inconvenience to the user, especially during travel.
In order to improve the above situation, U.S. government and customs regulate that the lock manufacturers must provide a standard key for the customs for opening all the locks manufactured by the manufacturers. According to this regulation, there are six lock manufacturers all over the world (including two manufacturers in Taiwan) who are allowed to manufacture such locks. The applicant is one of the two manufacturer in Taiwan. When meeting the above regulation, some issues must be considered in designing and manufacturing such locks. For example, it is considered how to combine the numeral wheel locking unit and key-driven locking unit in the locking apparatus to together control the lock hook thereof without affecting or interfering with the original operation and function of the locking apparatus. Also, the manufacturers must consider the cooperation of the two locking units and the state of one of the locking units when the other is operated. These issues are not discussed in the above Patents.